Cornell University Dean Says It's Okay To Start An ISIS Club On Campus

So, James O’Keefe from Project Veritas just posted his latest video. An incognito journalist (hidden camera, and all) pretending to be a Moroccan student asks the Assistant Dean at Cornell University, Joseph Scaffido, if it would be okay to create a pro-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria club, and whether he could also get funding to bring a “freedom fighter” over to Cornell for a “training camp”, and funding to send care packages to Islamic State and Hamas.

Scaffido is either monumentally ignorant or an ISIS sympathizer, though it’s quite obvious it’s the former. The journalist only refers to ISIS as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, so perhaps he was just flummoxed, and perhaps he didn’t want to be considered a racist since he believed he was talking to a Moroccan (thank you CAIR), or perhaps he’s just a liberal tool. Either way it’s pretty darn scary that Scaffido is the assistant head of a private Ivy League school that also happens to get some taxpayer funding.


An editorial for the Ithaca Voice rips O’Keefe for being “wildly misleading” and “dumb.”

We could point out the false and misleading narration, the interviewer’s lack of explicit reference to “ISIS,” the bizarre video editing. We could point out that the person being interviewed clearly doesn’t understand what he’s being asked, or that he’s merely doing his job as a university official.

But let’s go to the more fundamental question: Do even the people who made the video really believe that a Cornell assistant dean supports a student group backing ISIS? And if the videographers do believe this, why wouldn’t they ask the dean this question? Why pretend to ask the Cornell official about a “humanitarian group” helping victims in Syria and Iraq if they want to learn Cornell’s stance on the group universally known as “ISIS?”

We know the answer: Because the interviewer and O’Keefe are more interested in getting a video they can use to grab attention than in actually learning what’s happening on university campuses.

President David Skorton released a statement Wednesday pretty much saying as much, confirming what was already readily apparent to the neutral-minded observer:

“It is shameful that any individual would pose as a student facing racial discrimination at another university, ask leading questions on hidden camera about Cornell’s tolerance for differing viewpoints and backgrounds, and then conveniently splice together the resulting footage to smear our assistant dean and our University,” Skorton said.

“After speaking with Assistant Dean (Joe) Scaffido, I am convinced that he was not aware of what he was being asked.

It’s quite obvious who the dumb one is.